3 SPEEDS FOR ALL

I like my gears. My knees like my gears. I also like my single speeds, my knees not so much. After a brief experiment I figured I could get by with 3 gears, one for your typical singletrack fun, one for going up those really steep hills and one for coming down fast or commuting in a hurry. So here's the question, has anyone tried a sturmey or other type of wide range 3 speed hub for such activity. If so how did you get on? Can you still walk?

the problem is surely once you add the selector parts the added weight of each gear is probably negligible. I quite fancy dinglespeed though on my el mariachi as commuting on 34-20 is really spinny, but I like riding with a high cadence off road normaly so its fine for that.

You want one of these.Only 2 speeds,one for uphill and one for flat.A bit like hammerschmidt but betterer.Got one to go on 'project not fat or singlespeed but not skinny or geared' (need to find a snappier name).

I know it's not 3 speed or hub gears but my knees have given out and I've gone 6 speed on my Hope SS hub with a Zee short cage mech. I was running 33-17 with a 9 speed chain. Couldn't get a 10 speed chain on the Surly front ring to match the clutch mech. So now running 32 Hope front ring with the 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25 sprockets off a 105 cassette.

All works as it should and I haven't dropped the chain once. The three big ones are too spinny for anything other than what you would use a granny on a full geared bike. You can't stand up a gurn up a hill, you just spin the back wheel with no traction. So it's taken a bit of getting used to.

Sturmey do a 3 speed with 135mm spacing, 6 bolt disc mount and thumbshifter - less than £100 for everything.

Lighter than an Alfine and felt much more direct and less mushy (pawls rather than roller clutches). Proper direct drive in middle 1:1 ratio (Alfine isn't direct drive). Ratio mix was good for Lakes etc in UK, but broke me trying it in Austria (reverted to backup 7 speed derail. on a Hope ss cassette hub).

Downside is no sealing whatsoever, weak axle and chainline not very good with regular mtb cranks.

The Sturmey ratios were pretty much spot on for expanding a singlespeed range - the low gear was just low enough to take over where you would be stalled out ss (or dying from leg cramps on a long day out). The high gear was just high enough to make progress on the road whilst not spinning like a ****.

Slightly bigger jumps would be OK, but anything replicating the absolute extremes of a triple setup might not be very rideable in reality.